Hello all!
Having enrolled in the 'Global Environmental Change' module, I have chosen to zoom in the pertinent issue of plastic waste. Plastic pollution has increasingly received attention, owing to the growing accumulation of plastic waste that has materialised in the Great Pacific garbage patch. Based on the current consumption of plastic, plastic waste has been anticipated to increase by 10 times by 2025. Regionally, 8% of the manufactured plastic bags in the European Union are littered to the ocean, forming the bulk of marine litter.
In my journey of blogging, although I will examine plastic waste and its impacts on the environment as a whole, I will focus disproportionately on plastic bags. This choice originates from the recent summer spent back home in Singapore, where I realised that consumer habits when it came to plastic bagging differed very much. I arrived in London the first time a mere 2 weeks before the '5p Plastic Bag Charge' was implemented on all single-use plastic carrier bags in large shops, which had me reducing my plastic bag use drastically. Incidentally, supermarkets in Singapore were in discussion to implement a similar move come 2018, to reduce the burden of plastic waste disposal on our only landfill. The news came as a pleasant surprise for me, especially as I had gotten used to living with less plastic in London.
Having enrolled in the 'Global Environmental Change' module, I have chosen to zoom in the pertinent issue of plastic waste. Plastic pollution has increasingly received attention, owing to the growing accumulation of plastic waste that has materialised in the Great Pacific garbage patch. Based on the current consumption of plastic, plastic waste has been anticipated to increase by 10 times by 2025. Regionally, 8% of the manufactured plastic bags in the European Union are littered to the ocean, forming the bulk of marine litter.
Personal Thoughts
In my journey of blogging, although I will examine plastic waste and its impacts on the environment as a whole, I will focus disproportionately on plastic bags. This choice originates from the recent summer spent back home in Singapore, where I realised that consumer habits when it came to plastic bagging differed very much. I arrived in London the first time a mere 2 weeks before the '5p Plastic Bag Charge' was implemented on all single-use plastic carrier bags in large shops, which had me reducing my plastic bag use drastically. Incidentally, supermarkets in Singapore were in discussion to implement a similar move come 2018, to reduce the burden of plastic waste disposal on our only landfill. The news came as a pleasant surprise for me, especially as I had gotten used to living with less plastic in London.
Figure 1. Article on Singapore's highest-selling paper, The Straits Times, on the plans of implementing a plastic bag charge. But it certainly did trigger some angry reactions, as seen in the following 3 figures.
Figure 2. Angry netizen #1.
Figure 3. Angry netizen #2.
Figure 4. Angry netizen #3.
In my opinion, single-use carrier bags are commodities we could do with less - we could pay for one reusable plastic bag, use free handmade tote bags, or even our school bags to store groceries. The only inconvenience is travelling around with a reusable bag, and unfortunately this inconvenience could outweigh our care for the environment, possibly due to an unawareness of the full impact on the Earth from plastic waste as seen from Figures 2, 3 and 4. These opinions made me realise that before implementation of industry-wide moves, it is first quintessential to encourage responsibility and care for the environment. In the following weeks, I will explore these thematic areas:
1. Life cycle of a plastic bag from its construction to its destruction.
2. Environmental, ecological and social costs of plastic waste (especially plastic bags).
3. Legislations around plastic bags and how to tighten these regulations.
4. Proposed alternatives: biodegradable plastics, paper bags, and recyclable bags.
*5. How will I respond to these Facebook comments?
I hope that my blog would positively reshape mindsets around plastic packaging to move towards a cleaner Earth. See you next week!
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